Start planning for Personalized Learning with these 3 steps
Personalized learning doesn’t need to be as intimidating as it sounds. When people hear “personalized learning,” they oftentimes think of individualized playlists of activities or as many curricula as there are students in the classroom. But is conceptualization of personalied learning embraces myths of personalized learning, the most important of which is that individualization is synonymous with personalization.
The fact of the matter is that we don’t have to individualize in order to personalize. Personalization should not be a pedagogy for individualization. It should, instead, be a pedagogy for restoring equity and humanity to our classrooms. In some ways, this makes things messier, but in other ways, it’s liberating. We no longer have to be constrained by a definition of personalization that is not only dehumanizing—it’s unsustainable.
I know, it’s summer, and while I understand that teachers need a break, shifting your mindset towards personalization takes some pre-work. Consider these simple steps to start preparing for personalized learning this fall.
1) Consider redesigning instructional blocks
Taking a personalized approach necessitates changing the way we think about learning blocks. Gone are the days of “I do, we do, you do” or lecture-based teaching. In order to personalize learning through partnership with our students, we need to structure our learning blocks differently.
The standard workshop model would tell us to start with a minilesson, break out into a “workshop” where teachers work with small groups and individuals, and come back to together at the end of the learning block for a whole group reflection. This is great in theory--and even in practice a lot of the time. But it doesn’t always work out this way.
What matters most in an effective workshop is that there are both points of convergence and divergence. When students converge, we build a collective consciousness in the classroom, uniting all learners within a common purpose. When students diverge, we create opportunities for both student-driven and teacher-influenced personalization. Students can personalize their own learning by exercising choice in books, topics for writing, math games, or methods for problem-solving. Likewise, teachers can provide individualized feedback in short cycles that personalize learning paths, in addition to personalized minilessons, as needed.
All in all, even if the workshop model doesn’t work out the way you’ve intended, just make sure to preserve the spirit of the workshop model, ensuring you have the aforementioned points of convergence and divergence.
2) prepare your classroom for student choice
The key to learner-driven personalization is student choice. We need to get comfortable with sharing the responsibility of personalization with our students. But this doesn’t mean throwing caution to the wind, and this doesn’t mean simply letting kids do whatever they want. Instead, it means setting up the learning environment for students to make choice within constraints. Consider the following:
Beef up your classroom library. Use the summer to collect old books from Facebook friends, or even check out Half Price Books or Goodwill for cheap children’s books. While you can definitely leverage your school’s library, having a rich classroom library will help you coach students on book choice while in the comfort of your classroom.
Create a math game library. Math games are excellent choice work, especially after students have finished their math task for the day. Math games can build fluency through repetition—and they’re fun! Having your math game library ready to start the year will save you time and energy once the year starts.
Think through how you might help children learn to make choices. Make no mistake: you will need to teach them how to make choices. It is not likely they will come into your classroom knowing how to do this. You’ll need to think through classroom norms, natural consequences, and how you might model choice-making for students.
Build reflection routines. For students to be independent and make productive choices, they also have to be self-reflective. While reflection routines can be formalized with activities like these, you can also teach students about how to self-reflect in morning meeting, using sentence starters like:
I used to… Now I…
My strengths are…
My challenges are…
I want to overcome my challenges by…
Preparing your classroom for student choice takes time and intention. And it entails more than simply collecting resources: you must consider how you will sew choice into the fabric of your classroom culture.
3) Explore open-ended tasks
Similar to the workshop model and student choice, complex instruction is a sustainable practice that embeds personalization into the classroom culture, as it is supported by student choice. Coined by Stanford researchers Elizabeth Cohen and Rachel Lotan in 1997, complex instruction consists of leveraging open-ended tasks for learning, allowing for a “multiple-ability” curriculum, or curriculum that is specifically designed with varied access points for learners.
Take, for instance, the task below from my book Humanizing Distance Learning. This task is open-ended because there are many ways to reach a correct answer. Some students might use the electronic tiles in Seesaw to reach an answer, while others might leverage their knowledge of factor pairs. Regardless, the task is accessible to all learners, as tools are readily available for learners at varying stages of understanding.
From Humanizing Distance Learning (2020)
It’s true that high-quality open-ended tasks have been hard to come by, and it’s also true that they’re challenging to make. Consider leveraging tasks from Illustrative Mathematics, or Corwin’s new series of “Classroom-Ready Rich Math Tasks” here:
getting comfortable with uncertainty
Personalized learning isn’t something you ever “get right.” After all, our students are constantly changing, meaning the ways in which we personalize learning will have to change, too. Do yourself a favor, and get comfortable with not having all the answers. Know that you will not get it right 100% of the time. And most of all, be kind to yourself, because taking these first uncertain steps into the waters of personalization are a big accomplishment in and of itself.
Need help with personalized learning? Reach out to me.
